


Mischief, Mayhem, Soap, and Porridge

by sugarplumsenpai



Series: Sugarplum's Summer Drabbles [6]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cleaning, Cooking, Crack, M/M, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 11:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11356968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarplumsenpai/pseuds/sugarplumsenpai
Summary: With Levi having caught the summer flu Eren is left with supervising cleaning day.And whoever burnt the porridge that morning, leaving the kitchen in an utter mess, thoroughly deserves all his contempt. Or do they?[Written for the prompts: "I can never tell if you're hitting on me or not?”, Cleaning Day, and Accidental/Panicked Confession]





	Mischief, Mayhem, Soap, and Porridge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LavenderHedgie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderHedgie/gifts).



> Written for [lavenderhedgie on tumblr](http://lavenderhedgie.tumblr.com). Thank you so much for the prompts!
> 
> What follows is a completely self-indulgent little fic of utter silliness with boys being boys, girls being girls, Eren being Eren, and poor Levi having the flu. And yes, that title is a Fight Club reference. I have no shame. :)
> 
> Have fun with reading.

Eren despised the summer flu, and he absolutely positively loathed this day.

Usually, he loved cleaning days. They were fun. Today, however, was awful. Looking back at it so far, Eren thought he should have gotten right back to sleep before he’d even left the bed. He had left it though, and now he had to face the music. 

Which seemed to include having to witness Sasha sneaking up on Jean to carefully slip a wet bar of soap into the collar of his shirt, only to instantly flee into one of the shower cubicles.

“Arg!” Jean cursed, his hands shooting up to his neck and his whole body jerking, his voice echoing through the bathroom and mingling with Sasha’s mischievous cackle. “What is this shit? Fuck!”

“Cleaning day, Jean!” Sasha jeered.

His face was red but sadly not as much in agony as Eren would have hoped for. Jean had done his best to avoid cleaning anything all morning long, and Eren had no hope that this would change any time soon.

Diligently scrubbing away at a sink that suffered under a nasty case of scale, he frowned. At least Jean’s back would be greasy and gross with sticky soap all afternoon long.

“You know, Sasha,” Jean teased in-between his ongoing efforts. “I can never tell if you’re hitting on me or not. Feels a bit like it now.”

 _Yeah_ , Eren huffed to himself with a scowl, _it feels icky._ Hitting on Jean, ugh! The mere thought… He suppressed a shudder.

“I’m not!” Sasha affirmed, still giggling. “Go to someone else for the flirting, Jean!”

“Don’t,” Mikasa said flatly, face blank.

Jean, who—much to Eren’s regret—had already managed to get hold of the soap without even letting it slip through his fingers, smirked and now threw the bar at Mikasa. “Are you sure?”

She skilfully caught the bar with the half-filled bucket in her hands, making Jean look more than disappointed. “I’ll take over another room,” she said. “Don’t follow me.” And gone she was.

“Stop trying so hard, man,” Connie said to Jean.

“Yeah, keep on cleaning the bathroom,” Eren agreed, tending to another spot of scale on the sink. Sometimes he dreamed he could pull off a scowl like Levi and make them all work with just one single look. But no matter how much Eren tried, apparently he wasn’t intimidating enough. He sighed.

Oh, how he wished Levi was here! It would brighten Eren’s awful day immensely. Levi wasn’t here, however. Eren gave a small, sympathetic frown at the thought.

Levi was sick. The summer flu, Hanji had announced this morning, and ever since no one had seen their Captain. Eren, however, had snuck up to the door of Levi’s quarters a couple of times and heard the nasty cough, the gut-wrenching sniffles, and had been thinking all day long about what could make it better.

Certainly not a filthy bathroom.

Cleaning HQ had already been on today’s schedule, but solely with the help of the other guys, with no Levi nearby to order them around, Eren wouldn’t come far. On the contrary. He’d have to do their work all over again to make it right. As soon as he was finished with this faucet, of course. At least the bathroom should be shipshape when they were done for the day, and the kitchen too.

Eren stilled at the sudden thought, close to cursing. Shit, the kitchen! Hadn’t someone burnt the porridge this morning?

Ignoring the ongoing bickering between Sasha and Jean next to him, Eren considered his options: He could either finish the job here—and endure Jean’s presence—or he could scrape off dried crusts of porridge and whatnot that were caked to the cooker.

The cooker won.

“Oi, where do you think you’re going, Eren?” Jean sneered promptly.

“Kitchen,” Eren said.

Connie blushed.

Jean paled. “Oh, fuck. Yeah! Thanks, man! I wouldn’t go in there today if they’d beat me to it.”

Eren rolled his eyes and went.

A few minutes later he stood in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at a battlefield.

Whoever was responsible for this—probably Connie, Eren mused, only Connie could leave behind such a chaos, and he and Sasha had been overly frisky all day—had done a great job of leaving behind as much destruction as humanly possible. The pot hadn’t been scrubbed, the plates, cups, bowls, and cutlery hadn’t been washed. The counter was crowded with dirty dishes, and the cooker…well. For the first time ever, Eren wholeheartedly agreed with Jean on something. It was bad. Really, really bad.

For the first time that day, Eren was glad Levi was safely upstairs in his room, far away from what had occurred in here. Because one thing was certain:

Levi mustn’t see this.

Suddenly heavily motivated, Eren stepped into the room, gathered all his determination, and went to work. He started with soaking whatever dishes the sink could take, putting it all into the big, porridge-incrusted pot before filling it up with water. Then he took a deep breath and fetched a spatula. 

It soon became clear that burnt lactose and gluten was the evilest combination ever. Cleaning the cooker alone took the good part of the whole afternoon. As he’d scraped and scraped and scraped at a particularly nasty spot, Eren began to wonder what kind of horrible person had determined that porridge should contain milk and oat. Eren vividly hated that arsehole!

He scraped again, slipped, and banged his head against the cooker.

Fuck.

After that, he sat down on the floor and nastily scowled once more at his surroundings.

He missed Levi. Without him being ill this situation probably wouldn’t even have escalated like it had, and Connie would be sitting here on the floor now, pressing his hand against a bump on his forehead.

At least I heal quickly, Eren grimaced. Despite his well-trained muscles his whole body was sticky with sweat and aching from the effort. It didn’t particularly help that it was a hot day and that it had rained that morning, leaving the air humid and awfully muggy. 

Eyeing the cooker, Eren thought the worst part lay behind him, though. All it would take now was a bit of scrubbing and some more rough scraping at that one nasty corner, and the dishes.

If breakfast would have had tasted well at least, this whole thing probably wouldn’t have been all too bad either. It had tasted downright disgusting though, even for his rigorously humble soldier standards, and remembering the burnt taste on his tongue as if he was eating it again, Eren suddenly felt doubly betrayed. He should give Connie hell for this one day.

Then he thought of Levi again, laying in his bed and coughing. He must have gotten a portion of this gross stuff as well.

No way that he could easily recover like this.

Scrambling up to his feet again, Eren went to check the pantry. There were still a few eggs, some bread, and way, way down in its depths Eren even found a small package of ham. _Yes!_

Freshly motivated like this, he set back to work, starting with the dishes.

At least the porridge came off the bowls and plates and cutlery relatively easily after all this soaking. He scrubbed and scrubbed and couldn’t help a confident smile when he’d stored the little stuff back into their rightful places in the cupboard. After giving the pot another round of soaking he took the scraper back into his hands, refaced his nemesis of a cooker, and couldn’t help but feel an odd sensation of satisfaction when only half an hour of additional scraping later—seriously, Connie!—and another fifteen minutes of scrubbing, Eren was finally, finally done, the cooker close to sparkling again, ready for use. And the kitchen itself as well.

Eren beamed. Time to cook Levi some food.

Lost in dazzling daydreams about earning Levi’s gratefulness and having him fully recover and back among them soon, Eren started with brewing some tea. Then he heated a pan, greased it with first melting the fat of the ham in it, and—bless his mother who had taught him how to fry eggs when he’d been only five years old—cracked in two eggs, that instantly began to sizzle and spread their wonderful, buttery scent.

 _Eggs must be healthy,_ Eren thought, marvelling at the solidifying, clear whites and the sunny-yellow yolks. After a short consideration, he added a third one to the pan. 

“Levi will love me for this,” he mumbled to himself, turning away from the pan to cut the bread into slices so Levi could load it with ham or eggs as he liked. “Well,” he added. “Hopefully.”

“What.”

Eren froze, the knife halfway through the last piece of bread, his neck prickling in alert, every single one of his senses up in arms.

A pitiful sniff came from the doorway.

Eren turned around, and every single thought fell out of his head in blank panic.

Levi stood in the entrance of the kitchen. His skin looked awfully pale and waxen, his eyes were red-rimmed, and his nose was bright crimson as well, probably sore from blowing it excessively, going by the handkerchief in his lifted hand.

 _I want to hug him!_ shot through Eren’s head, completely unhelpful.

“What did you say?” Levi rasped. “My ears are plugged.” His nose sounded ‘plugged’ too.

“Um…I…” Eren flushed. Before he could stop himself, it all spilt out. “I wanted to make you a second breakfast, Sir, or lunch…dinner! I wanted to make you dinner since the porridge this morning was so terrible, you see? So I thought you might be hungry and decided to cook and maybe make you smile, because I love yo–” he redirected his speech at the last second, “–your smile. Haha!”

Well. He was fucked.

Levi stared at him, his eyes glassy and blinking a bit too often.

Eren wanted to die. Right as he thought he couldn’t keep up with this staring contest any longer without scorching to ashes right on this spot, Levi sneezed. The tension in the room snapped, and Eren dared to breathe again.

After blowing his nose and giving another heart-rending sniff, Levi stepped over to the hearth. His legs were a bit wobbly, Eren noticed, although the scowl on Levi’s brow said otherwise.

“This is for me?” he asked, gesturing at the eggs still sizzling in the pan. They looked done by now.

Still utterly flustered, but apparently saved from the immediate danger of imploding any moment, Eren nodded. “Um…yes. Yeah. The bread and tea too.” He pointed at the counter.

Levi coughed. “Who goofed up breakfast? It was an experience.”

“Connie, Sir,” Eren stammered, slowly composing himself again. “I guess.”

“Thought so. Kitchen a mess?”

“Yes.”

“Mm.” Lifting the pan, Levi transferred its contents onto the plate Eren had already prepared, turned around to add the bread to the eggs, and took the tea pot as well.

Instead of just leaving the kitchen with his dinner, he looked up with his slightly unfocused, swollen eyes, stepped closer into Eren’s personal space, and—to Eren’s utter shock and delight—gave him a warm, scratchy peck on his cheek. “Thank you.”

Completely awestruck and blushing fiercely all the way up to his hair line in an instant, Eren stood there, rooted to the floor, and could only gape at Levi wobbling-definitely-not-wobbling out of the kitchen, while his hand slowly reached up to press against the spot where, just a moment ago, Levi’s lips had been. 

God, Levi had smelled absolutely breathtaking. What a beautiful day! 

Eren should give Connie a hug. 

He still stood there, elated beyond hope, when Mikasa found him a few minutes later.

“What happened to you,” she asked, frowning at his expression. 

“What? Nothing, wha–what happened to you?” he managed, barely noticing through his love-crazed haze that she was soaking wet and…actually seething?

“I am going to murder Jean," she growled. "You in?”

“What?” Eren mumbled. “Oh no, I guess he’s alright. I’ve got to go now.” He snuck past Mikasa. “Mop that floor, yeah? You’re dripping.”

“What.”

Completely immune to her wrath, Eren left her, already wondering if Levi would kiss him again one day. 

The sun set over HQ in stunningly glowing colours that night.

When it rose again on the next morning Eren awoke to a sneeze, alongside a murderous headache between his eyes and temple, and a besotted grin. He still grinned when the runny sniffles set in around breakfast time, and he still grinned when the coughs began to shake him at noon. What was this flu? He was a Titan. He shouldn’t get sick!

 _Totally worth it,_ Eren thought. Levi had kissed him! Well, his cheek. Good enough. 

Eren still thought so, when a knock came on his door. 

Levi stood on the other side, looking far too healthy and wonderful again. He offered Eren a plate with eggs and ham with a little smirk that made Eren grin even wider.

Stepping aside, he let Levi in. 

Eren loved the summer flu.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is loved. <3


End file.
